You Can't Catch Me

by Joyce Carol Oates

  Unfortunately, there was no identification label on the suitcase. He could see where it had been attached to the handle, but had been torn off.

  Looking through his own things Tristram found, again to his amazement, a wallet, a stranger’s wallet, in one of the pockets of his herringbone suit coat; the coat he’d worn yesterday on the train. The wallet resembled his own yet was not his own, for his remained where he’d laid it the night before, on top of the bedroom bureau. In a moment all became clear, or nearly: the porter had handed Tristram the wrong wallet, and in the confusion of the moment, too timid to wish to annoy his fellow passengers, Tristram had accepted it without question. “So I myself am the cause of all this,” he said aloud. “I am to blame.”

  Placed side by side, the wallets differed significantly. Though of approximately the size and dimensions of Tristram’s wallet, the stranger’s wallet was made of a rich hand-tooled kidskin, while Tristram’s was ordinary leather; it was so new as to smell, still, of newness, while Tristram’s, a Christmas gift from his mother, dead now for years, was frayed and worn smooth from constant handling. It did not surprise Tristram, though it dismayed him, that the stranger’s wallet had been emptied of cash and credit cards; even of change; in fact it contained nothing but an identification card, partly torn, with only the typed name ANGUS T. MARKHAM remaining. No address! No telephone number!

  “So, it is his,” Tristram said, frowning. “And the other things too … I suppose.”

  He searched the wallet methodically, and found, in one of its compartments, a two-by-three-inch black-and-white photograph, very likely a passport photograph; which seemed to him, in the first flush of discovery, to have solved the mystery. For the man in the photograph resembled Tristram Heade, at least superficially … around the eyes, in particular, though he wore no glasses; and the mouth; and his hair, though more stylishly cut than Tristram’s, appeared too to be very blond. He was of indeterminate age, anywhere between thirty and forty-five; leaner-jawed than Tristram; with none of Tristram’s air of self-doubt; a man who knows his own worth, and will not be sold short. Tristram thought him, grudgingly, a handsome man; a ladies’ man, by the look of him. He felt a mild stirring of revulsion.

  Still, everything fell into place; or nearly. It was clear that Tristram resembled Angus Markham closely enough to have been mistaken for him by the Pullman porter (who must have checked the wallet, and come upon the photograph); and, coincidentally, by the taxi driver (who had, to Tristram’s embarrassment, seemed to expect a more generous tip than Tristram had pressed into his hand: though that tip, by Tristram’s standards, had been generous). As for the management of the Hotel Moreau … he would have to set them straight, or move out at once.

  At any rate, Tristram thought, it has turned out to be a simple misunderstanding. He would make a telephone call or two to the proper authorities at the Philadelphia train station; and get Angus Markham’s things returned to him as quickly as possible. He would speak with the manager of the hotel. He only hoped that, furious as he probably was, Angus T. Markham would not blame him.

  3

  So Tristram ordered breakfast from room service, and, while he ate, or tried to eat, made a half-dozen futile calls to the train station. It took him three calls simply to be put in contact with the party who might have been of assistance; but this person, after a lengthy search, during which time Tristram had no choice but to continue to press the receiver to his ear, and eat, in a desultory fashion, his cooling food, informed him that no one named “Angus T. Markham” was registered as having traveled on that particular train; there was no one named “Angus T. Markham” in the computer, dating back to 1981. Another call, equally frustrating, to the Lost and Found Office of the station, connected him with a person, whether male or female Tristram could not determine, who informed him, in a maddeningly indifferent voice, that, as of that morning, no one named “Angus T. Markham” had reported anything missing. “Wait,” Tristram said quickly, as the clerk was about to hang up, “—could you look again? He must have filed a claim. I have his things here in my room as proof, if proof be required,” Tristram said, not quite knowing what he said, “of the man’s existence.”

  There followed then a long wait, while the clerk checked another time, or pretended to do so: without success. “Sorry, mister. No ‘Angus T. Markham.’” Tristram said anxiously, “How is it possible that a passenger might lose his wallet and luggage, and not trouble to report it?” “Oh, people lose things on our trains all the time,” the clerk said blandly, “and no one ever hears of them again.” “The things, or the people?” Tristram asked. The clerk chuckled, as if that were the proper answer to Tristram’s question; and asked him to leave his name and telephone number, in case “Markham” did come in. So Tristram did so, and hung up. It astonished him to see that he had spent two hours on the telephone … and that his scrambled eggs and Canadian bacon, long abandoned, had congealed in an unappetizing mess on his plate. The coffee pot, so hot at first that Tristram’s fingertips were burned brushing against it, was now stone cold.

  He telephoned Virgil Lux to apologize, and reschedule their appointment for early afternoon; dressed hurriedly; and, on his way out of the hotel, stopped at the front desk to explain, or to attempt to explain, that he was not, as the hotel management seemed to think, Angus T. Markham—“I am Tristram J. Heade, just as I am registered.” None of the morning clerks seemed to know Tristram, however, and the manager had not yet come in. The head clerk checked the registration for the Louis Quatorze suite, and said, politely, “You are ‘Tristram Joseph Heade, of Richmond, Virginia.’ Is that not correct?” “That is correct,” Tristram said, blushing, “but there seems to be a misunderstanding about my being ‘Markham.’” Tristram knew himself regarded with curious, if resolutely polite stares. He said half-pleadingly, “Well—if a ‘Mr. Markham’ calls me, please tell him that his suitcase and things are in my room, and that I will be back in a few hours. If he likes, he is welcome to come over, and take them from my room, in my absence.” “And who is ‘Mr. Markham’ again?—I’m afraid it isn’t clear,” the clerk said. “A man you say has taken your wallet and luggage by mistake, from your room?” “No, not at all,” Tristram said irritably. “The reverse. Or, nearly the reverse.” He checked his watch; it was nearly one o’clock. “I’ll explain later,” he said. “I’m afraid I don’t have time now.”

  So, his face burning, he left the hotel; crossed Rittenhouse Square; and set out on his usual brisk pace in the direction of Twenty-second Street, a mile or so away, where, in a charming little mews called Chancellor Street, Lux’s Rare Books & Coins, Est. 1889 had its shop. The April morning was warm and humid, the air in the streets touched with a faint garbagey odor; not in itself unpleasant, but less fresh than he might have wished. It was Tristram’s custom to walk a good five or six miles every day, except in the most inhospitable weather. He knew Richmond so well he might have walked it blindfolded, but Philadelphia remained an unknown quantity, never to be mastered. Even the Rittenhouse Square district, which he had visited countless times, and happily tramped about in, was largely mysterious to him still … and the character of streets and neighborhoods seemed continually to be changing from one visit to the next.

  This morning, however, he paid very little attention to his surroundings. The vexing problem of “Angus Markham,”—or was it the problem of “Markham/Heade”—occupied his thoughts. How peculiar it all was, and how … disturbing. Surely he was not to be held to account for stealing Markham’s money? Markham’s things? He knew himself guiltless; or, if guilty, guilty of nothing more than a moment’s carelessness on the train. If only he had taken time to examine the damned wallet, he thought miserably, all this might have been avoided.

  He tried to recall his fellow passengers on the train. He’d had two meals in the dining car, but had not encountered anyone who might be said to resemble him. He’d traveled by Pullman, as he always did; had slept poorly, as always; and had, as always, spent most
of his time reading. Since boyhood, but particularly since the death of his parents, Tristram had been susceptible to fugues of daydreaming and forgetfulness; reverie-states in which his normal waking consciousness seemed to be suspended, and another, pleasurable, mysterious, oddly comforting, claimed authority. He rarely remembered what he dreamt of at such times except to understand that, lost in the labyrinthine passages of his own thoughts, he was neither awake nor asleep; and quite oblivious to the existence of the outside world.… His mother once said of him, Tristram dreams so very strongly.

  Tristram’s father had died when Tristram was twenty-three years old, and in his second year of law school at the University of Virginia; his mother had died when he was twenty-eight years old, and already, despite a modicum of success, as a young lawyer with one of the most distinguished of Richmond firms, disillusioned with his profession. He had never felt confident that he had been hired by the firm, for one thing, on his own merits—if, indeed, he had any merits; he was convinced it had been for his family name. He surely had little lawyerly talent, or cunning, of his own. To go for another’s throat, however obliquely, by way of a staggeringly intricate system of language, and all of it fortressed by the rectitude of “the law”—did not appeal to him in the slightest.

  So, following his mother’s death, Tristram had simply resigned his position with the firm. And began to live a life of solitude, and utter contentment, in his parents’ house; or, more precisely, in two or three rooms of his parents’ twenty-room house; vaguely hoping that, yet, he might marry, as the Heades had quite naturally wanted him to do … but the years passed, and continued, almost dreamily, to pass … and he remained single; with his books, and walks, and the company now and then of a very few friends, bachelors like himself, shabbily well-to-do heirs of Virginia families once vigorous, ambitious, and aggressive. He ordered most of his books through the mail, knowing that the dealers with whom he did business could be trusted; and went out several times a year for what he thought of, in his quiet way, as “the adventure of newness,” to antiquarian conferences, and to antiquarian shops in Philadelphia, Washington, and New York City. (Tristram had not, however, visited New York City for some time. Its very atmosphere, highly charged, yet inchoate, with so great a flood of stimuli on every side, had become worrisome to him.)

  Taking the train out of Richmond was in itself an adventure; one never knows, after all, with whom one will sit in the dining car; or what casual, wayward, yet sometimes richly rewarding conversations one might strike up with total strangers. This past trip, Tristram had become acquainted with two elderly women who had known his mother’s grandmother; with a numismatician on his way to a numismatics conference in Philadelphia; and with several children. (He was a man very fond of children so long as he was in their company. Apart from them, and apart from the idea of them, he never thought of them at all.) He’d exchanged friendly greetings with the train porters as always and only regretted that the porter who had given him Markham’s wallet had not seemed to know his name. How easily the mix-up might have been avoided …

  Suddenly he remembered having opened the door of the compartment beside his, absentmindedly; and glimpsing, inside, a man sitting in the near-dark (it was just dusk), evidently looking out the window, a drink in his hand. Tristram of course apologized immediately, and backed out; retaining only the impression that the stranger did not seem much startled or annoyed by the intrusion, and murmured something that sounded like, “Quite all right.” And the next morning, making his way from one car to another, as the open air whistled about his head, and the floor swayed and lurched, Tristram collided with a man who, like himself, was having trouble keeping his balance; a stranger whose face he did not see clearly, except to remark, with the fleeting accuracy of perception we experience in such situations, that here was a face that seemed in some way familiar or significant … but the moment was fleeting. The two men bumped shoulders, murmured mutual apologies, and kept going. There was nothing more to it than that.

  Now, however, Tristram wondered if the man in the compartment and the man with whom he had collided were the same man; and if that man was the elusive Angus T. Markham. For someone, after all, had to be Angus T. Markham.… He rubbed his shoulder ruefully; it did hurt, and was probably bruised.

  Tristram looked up to find himself on a traffic-congested corner; the intersection of Twenty-sixth Street and Charity, a street of which he had never heard. He had no idea whether Chancellor might be to his left or his right and saw, to his annoyance, that he was already ten minutes late for his appointment with Mr. Lux. The thought passed violently through his head that he was making too much of the Markham business, as he made too much of most things. And that it was very naive of him to care in the slightest whether a stranger’s things were returned to him, so long as his own plans were not interrupted. Do you imagine, an interior voice lightly mocked, Markham would care in the slightest about you?

  4

  Tristram was relieved to see that Chancellor Street, which was scarcely more than an alley, had not much changed its old-world character; though Twenty-second and -third streets, which bounded it, had grown unpleasantly busy. Not only cars, taxis, and buses streamed past, but bicyclists as well, hurtling themselves forward without much concern for traffic lights or pedestrians.

  Though Tristram had been looking forward to his appointment with Virgil Lux for weeks, he felt a stab of disappointment as soon as he stepped into the shop and heard the bell tinkle overhead. Why was he here?—why, of all places in Philadelphia, let alone the world, here? The place seemed to him distinctly dustier and shabbier than he remembered; with a sharp smell of mice; so jammed with old furniture and books that one could scarcely draw a deep breath. When Lux greeted him, and shook his hand, Tristram saw to his embarrassment that the older man was wearing a toupee; and that this toupee, youthful as it was, and of what appeared to be good quality, nonetheless made him look older than his age of sixty-five or thereabouts. Also, his wide, rather fawning smile revealed obvious false teeth. And one of his eyes had a vague milky cast, very like that of a dog owned, decades ago, by a black yardman who had worked for Tristram’s father.… He wondered why he had not noticed these details before when now they struck his eye so jarringly.

  Though Tristram was the soul of patience, so slowly and ponderously did Virgil Lux speak, describing the material he hoped his customer would buy, that Tristram soon grew restless; his mind began to wander. Shapeless as smoke, and as seemingly idle, his thoughts drifted free … and fixed upon, of all things, a female figure … a voluptuous, near-naked, faceless female figure. Tristram saw himself take the woman boldly in his arms; saw himself kiss her; felt her warm, eager lips; and her arms tight, strong, even convulsive, around his neck. His heart beat hard; blood rushed into his face. Who was this woman? Who in fact was this man?—for it could scarcely be Tristram Heade, so shamelessly impassioned.

  “And here, Mr. Heade, you see … the initials presumed to be those of Her Majesty Queen Anne; and the date … though the ink is badly faded … 1709.”

  Tristram shifted uncomfortably in his seat, and made an effort to listen to Lux’s words. The dealer had laid out on his counter an early eighteenth-century quarto edition of The Tragedy of Macbeth, by Wm. Shakespeare, a rare document, its aged leather binding intricately engraved; its fine print faded, but still legible. The item was listed in Lux’s catalogue as “out of the personal library of Anne, Queen of England (1702–14).” When Tristram stared, and failed to respond, Lux said, apologetically, yet with an air of subtle resentment, that, since Tristram’s last visit to Philadelphia, he had become “somewhat handicapped”: he’d had a mild stroke, which was why, if Tristram wondered, his speech was slurred and his left hand partly paralyzed. Tristram said quickly, “I hadn’t noticed.” Then, because this sounded wrong, “—I’m very sorry to hear it.” “Well,” said Lux, sighing, “I am much recovered. Thank you.”

  As Lux continued with his slow, dogged presentation, a
nd Tristram prepared, listlessly, to make his purchase—he had come, after all, so many hundreds of miles: he could not return empty-handed—another customer entered the shop; the bell tinkled another time. This customer was younger than Tristram by at least a decade, and had the boyish, pale, hungry look of a student besotted by books. He had come to browse, not to buy, for Lux’s prices were too high for him, and, within minutes—it must have been a consequence of the dreary slanted dust-heavy light—he looked older; stooped over a bin of old books, his shoulders rounded, his face pinched, his skin a whitish cheesy texture. Old books, old bindings, old paper, old things … Tristram stared at the boy with something like horror.

  Mr. Lux had asked him a question, but Tristram had not heard. It was time, he supposed, for him to take out his checkbook … to make his purchase. He glanced at his watch, however, and saw, alarmed, that most of the afternoon had drained away: it was nearly four-thirty!

  He said, “The quarto is impressive, Mr. Lux, if it’s genuine; but how do I know if it’s genuine? I have only your word to go by.”

  For a long moment the old man simply stared at him. A complex scrim of emotions showed in his face—shock, hurt, apprehension, guilt. His milky eye had grown milkier.

  He has been cheating me for years, Tristram thought.

  Lux stammered, “Why, Mr. Heade, I … I scarcely know how to … to respond to such … a …”

  Tristram was on his feet now, towering over him. He said politely, “I think I’ll wait a while before deciding, Mr. Lux, if you don’t mind. The quarto is rather expensive after all.”